This is a public announcement

..About my mum's boobs.

My lovely lovely mother whoisreadingovermyshoulderrightnowsendhelp is very lovely.

I've been dying of a grizzly infection which has left me bed-ridden (or hobbling around at work, grimacing) and in constant discomfort so my lovely lovely mother made me a nice hot water bottle because my feet were cold, and when she was sealing it, she squeezed it, caused a geiser, and scalded her boobs.

Le ouch.

Scalded as in, red, sore, blisters and everything. The whole shebang of boob-burns.

All hail my mother, who not only braved evil mastitis when I was a baby, but has now had her boobs poached so I could have warm feet.

Round-up.

So what's been happening around here?

I went to Slovenia for eight days.

I got my exam result (note the singular). I got a U, but it was a high U so it was more like a U* and overall it comes out as a C so I've passed, which really makes no difference to me.

I'm still working on my mum to give me £3000 for body-piercing-training reasons.

I'm back at work. Joy to the fucking world.

And yesterday I gave my nephew a makeover.

I keep having panic attacks, I need my meds taking up a notch.

And finally... The return of the penis pasta.

Family Bliss.

Oh.. Facebook.. I love your face and everything attached to it.

^^Click to enlarge^^

Paul - My brother

Sam - Our aunt

Nicole - super-hot blogger with no ideas

The artist formally known as Nicole.

Yesterday I went round to my neighbours house and awwww'd over the tiny baby hamsters, the gorgeous rats (just.. trust me, here) the biiiiiiig snakes, the horribleblehblehbleh spider, the rottweiler, the bird and the tiny puppy whilst my mum got a tattoo from our neighbour.

The end result?

Not baaaad.

It designed it by accident - doodling whilst watching TV. It looks rough because that was literally a minute after we got home and the ink was all smudged on the surface because her skin had puckered up.

Still. I think it's super awesome.

My neighbours include Sasha the rottweiler and Kenny the boa constrictor.

I think I mentioned once or twice that my newish neighbours have lots of animals.

Today I met them all and it was terrifyingly awesome.

I came outside to find everyone stood on the balcony with Tiny Pup (no name yet.. very tiny) who they adopted because his mum stopped producing milk when he was two weeks old and Sasha the huge, chunky, gorgeous BFG of a rottweiler. They have two other gorgeous puppies who love running around our kitchen. They have two house bunnies, a tarantula called Rosie, two rats and eleven snakes.

I shit you not.

Dan (neighbour who also happens to be a tattoo artist - WOOP! He let me look at all his design mags) said something about getting Monty, who I assumed was one of the rabbits or rats.

No. Not he was not.

Monty is a huge python. Monty the Python. I love Monty. He's good people. Or snakes. (He's one heavy guy, that's fo sho)

Theeen they brought out a couple of the smaller snakes. One, Choco, was tiny and looked like a bracelet on my wrist. Another, Kenny, was slightly bigger and I could feel by holding him that he was one strong little guy.

"Are they the same breed of snake?" My mum asked.

"Ohh, no. Choco's a corn snake and the one Nicky's holding is a boa constrictor."

REALLY?!

I would've done a happy dance if my hands weren't locked together by half a metre of solid snake. I took Kenny upstairs to show Cleo and straight away he struck out at her. She yelped, I burst out laughing and ran downstairs.

"Kenny tried to kill Cleo!! KENNY ROCKS!"

No, no. NOW you're sorry.

I'm gonna attempt NaBloPoMo again this month.

No, please... Don't cry...

Ahem.

The theme is 'now', so..

This month is going off with a BANG, or at least an OWW, because I'm dishing out a whole new kind of payback.

You see, I'm über pissed at my mum for getting off-her-tits drunk whilst I was in one of my black moods and Cleo was there (she gets stressed, she doesn't like not having someone in a solid frame of mind around), and then just being insanely annoying for all of it.

Sooooo...

I'm exacting my revenge.

Tomorrow I'm going to get a fuckload of piercings.

I could not tell you where, or how many, or how much it'll cost, or if I'll chicken out (I have no piercings)..

But tomorrow, I will come home (and then go to work - woe is me -) with more holes then I went out with.

(Hahahaha...)

Suck on THAT.

Most of my secrets end up here anyway. I kinda suck.

Afterthought.

I have a hard time just letting things happen.

Maybe because it's because I'm so headstrong that I don't like to let things I have no control over just happen anyway. I like to have the ability to yell 'woah woah woah, what the shit?' if it gets to be too much and to be heard and to have that acknowledged.

Lately it feels like I've been sat on the sidelines struggling to follow the storyline. I can't really grasp any of it because it's constantly changing and seems so blurry.

So, this is home.

One typical thing of parents breaking up is the custody battle that follows afterwards.

My parents have been pussy-footing around the whole who-gets-who thing for a while now. My mum has inheritted my grandma's house so we're fixing it up and she's moving in there, but that won't be for a few months yet. From the moment I realised that Uhh, Shit, my parents are breaking up, I've always said that I'd stay in Walmgate.

My mum had this idea of her jumping between houses, just so we wouldn't have to choose, but that fizzled out. She also said she wouldn't go anywhere until I was fixed, like a bike or my weak-at-heart bed.

As it stands, I'm staying in Walmgate with my dad, Cleo's going to live in Beans Way with my mum. Opposite sides of York really.

I love my house. Despite the arguments, accidents and occupants it's the place I'm most comfortable in right now. It's the place where I can sit on the kitchen counter whilst waiting for something to cook. It's the place where I can occupy the top floor for days and not come down. It's the place where I can sit on the doorstep on the balcony wrapped in a blanket and not be in the way. It's the place where I feel like I'm not trying too hard.

And that's just fine.

Arty B makes everything better.

I was a-talking to my friend about the day/date/time (I have a very shakey grasp of these things - no school = no concept of time at all) the other day and was HORRIFIED to discover that it's only the 17th of March so far.

Happy St. Patrick's Day by the way.

NaBloPoMo makes everything so drawwwwwwwn out. Until I was told otherwise I was sure it was the 42nd of March and that I could stop it with the typing and the clicking and the posting, but no.

Anyhoo. That's a roundabout way of saying that I've run out of things to say today, so let's all talk about my aunt's dog instead.

A few months back I posted about a critter called Lil' AB who looked an awful lot like this:

Well that was six months ago, and I did say he'd grow to be bigger than Bufflar (code name for 'Elizabeth' the insane jack russell terrier), and by God, we definitely can't call Arthur Boscastle 'Lil' AB' anymore.

This is Arty B.

He's insane. He is hyper and huge and jumpy-uppy and very, very licky. He knows I'm allergic to him, so he lies all over me when we're confined to small spaces i.e. the car. He just love me that much.

So heavily drugged up on allergy medication that I have to wear sunglasses to hide the fact that they are trying to knock me out.

We get on like a house on fire, just so long as he confines the tongue-down-the-throat thing to my sister so I can laugh and not suffer the same slobbery end.

Bonus picture: Arty B and Bufflar. Bufflar likes to think she's still incharge and she does boss him around a lot, if he goes near other dogs she will knock him the hell down. I'm sure she loves him really.

One being that doesn't love the dough-eyed Arty B and definitely doesn't love the loud-mouthed Bufflar?

Morello.

Morello is my late grandma's cat who has an insane attitude problem. Grandma says she named him after the cherry trees at a place where my aunt works but I'm pretty sure she actually got the idea from Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine.

Excellent...

Morello 'Fat Lad' Rogerson-Gaines-Smith. He's like the Mr Burns of cats.

I tried caring once. Then I stopped trying. The end.

I'm having what my mum likes to call a bad day.

I call it one of those days where I think you say I'm ill but really you all drove me crazy.

It's just one of those days where I sincerely do not give a crap. It's a day where I hate Dr. D for not seeing a problem and fixing it instead of turfing me out and onto counselling which I need like a frog needs sunburn.

I don't see how it helps, talking about stuff around me when that's what bothers me in the first place. It's stuff that can't magically disappear either, so there's no use trying. I fucking hate talking about myself. (*she says, talking about herself*)

What I need is a really long holiday, one where I don't need to worry about whether or not each time I go to work will be my last (job insecurity is a bitch), whether I should go to school or not (the answer is usually a resounding negative) and whether or not I should just call it a day and fuck off to Lapland or something.

Lapland is awesome this time of year, by the way. And you don't need to learn the language if you're all by yourself (though I did have a stint with Finnish a few years ago koska olen fantastinen).

Sleeping is probably more productive than moaning about Dr. D right now, so I'm spent.

"Alright, everyone. Look angry."

- Instructions to everyone at work when two customers walked into the store 11 seconds (we do a countdown) before we were due to close.

I feel sorry for those customers really... They spent five minutes trying to look for an item whilst we all gave them blistering looks as we hung around the front desk like a bunch of vultures, then when they went to the till they were told it wasn't in stock, so they had to do the walk of shame out of the door with all the staff watching them.

Mwahahahaha...

So yesterday I accidentally took part in a 48-hour bender, and then when I got to sleep my imagination was all "OmigodOmigodOmigodWhereHaveYouBeenWe'veGotSoMuchToTellYou!!!!" so I was in that kinda shallow state of sleep all night and then I went to work all day. And then it was Mother's Day here in little ol' England so I had to do Mum things with my Mum and Grandma before I could FINALLY just die on my arse like I've been dying to do for oh... 56 hours or so.

So that's the sorry tale of Nicole vs. blue food colouring.

In other news, my sister who spent most of my lower school years (11-14 for argument's sake) calling me 'pizza face' and 'metal mouth' has a big juicy spot on her chin, and I've SO reaped the rewards on this one.

On seeing her this morning looking particularly grumpy...

"Hahaha... You've got a third eye. Sucks to be you."
"Shut up Nicole."
"Ohhh hell no. I'm gonna milk this. Looks ripe, by the way."
"Fuck off! You had spots for years."
"Yeah, but not now. You can't just do epically stupid shit like pointing out that I had spots and then expect it not to bite you in the ass later. You're just like Hilter, Zitler."
"That's not funny."
"Ohh... Zitler, it's hilarious."

Nicole 9, Cleo 2.

Miss Soft Touch

My family seek to destroy me from within.

No, wait. That's not accurate. My mum and sister seek to destroy from within.

We were walking back from Wetherspoons (because we're classy like that) where we'd spent the entire meal next to a table of women who were cackling like hyenas. After I made some passing comment about them all being very, very single, my mum piped up 'Nah... They're all married. To builders. So they have stacks of money and think they have loads of class when really they've got shit-all in that department.' Too true, too true.

Anyway, we were walking back from Wetherspoons and we went to the shop to get some toilet paper because SOMEONE (Cleo) very inconsiderately caught a cold and used up all the loo roll in one night. Walmgate's corner shop isn't particularly lush, it smells of cat pee most nights and is a hub for all manner of chavs, smelly old men (who have really bright personalities, I've found, because I stand on street corners making small talk with smelly old men at 3am whilst waiting for my kebab to be cooked) and other people. It's full of small brands and soon enough my mum comes along yelling "Nicky! Nicky, guess what we found!"

It was toilet paper. And it was called 'Nicky Super Soft Touch'.

Since that moment I have been hearing 'Oh, Nicky is so soft!', 'Nicky feels great!' or 'Ahh... Nicky!' erupting from the bathroom all night.

My family are strange and somewhat awful folk.

Eat my shorts.

The Simpsons/Family Guy is what my family aspires to be, I think. Sometimes.

I've seen an episode of The Simpsons at least every other day for most of my life, my sister has possibly seen more, and my parents have too. Same with Family Guy. Same with Futurama.

So it's a pretty standard thing in my household to hear quotes from The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy in my family. I don't even notice anymore, but my friend stopped by the other day and she professes that her mind was BLOWN.

"Nicky, can you open the car hole please?" (Garage)

"DAD! BENDER BURNT THE FOOD AGAIN!" (Oven)
"Kill him! Stun him! Turn him off!"
"How do you do that?"
"Ask your mother."
"MUM! HOW DO YOU KILL BENDER?!"

"What language are you learning this month?"
"Robonian. The language I didn't make up."

"Hello. Where's Mum?"
"I dunno."
"Mum! Mum! Mum! Mum! Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! Ma! Ma! Ma! Mamma! Mamma! Mamma! Ma-"
"WHAT!?"
"...Hi."

"Hey look! Hot-air balloon!"
"Hey there, blimpy boy..."

And so on.

I'm telling you this because The Cleveland Show has just been aired in the UK, and my sister and dad? They love it.



It's so weird it's kinda awesome.

(And I've totally called someone 'chocolate person' before. I was four. It happens. I'm sorry.)

Ode to my mamma. Who is not fat.

Like I said yesterday, the theme of the month is 'strange' and there's really no better place to start than with my mother.

My mother is a very strange person. She's also totally awesome, and reacts relatively calmly about my frequent rampages over potato famine and ceremonious pot-smoking at funerals.

She didn't argue with me when playing chess, aged seven, I told her that throwing marbles at the king was the 'nuclear warfare' rule.

She doesn't grumble (too much) when I spend all my money on cookies and cherry Sourz.

She lets me do whatever I want because she knows damn well and good that I won't go anywhere anyway.

She doesn't question me when I say 'well, my husband says...'

She has better dress sense than me.

She shares really bad jokes, and makes them funny.

Her password to my laptop is 'cowpat' because she was drunk at the time.

She'll play Monopoly with me even though I always win.

She doesn't fuss over me even when I'm clearly slipping into a sort of blackhole. She knows I hate fuss, and that I hate people who make out that I can't handle myself (which, in fairness, I can't. I just go along for the ride).

I love her because she tells me that I can't just go on for a few months reading and writing and generally being a 'starving artist' because 'you need talent for that'.

I love her when she tells me to 'remember my place' at work when I announce that I punched/slapped/knee-ed my manager... again.

So here's to my mum who is still holding up even though me and my sister are currently going through the whole 'Muuuuuum, she hit me!' 'Muuuuum, I didn't!' routine that she knows and perhaps doesn't love.

"That's life, this life."

I'd say I've been waiting around for shit to start happening but that would be a lie, children.

I've been waiting for shit to stop happening. It still hasn't stopped but I've got time for you now between lying in bed reeling at my considerable luck or lack thereof and watching Moomin DVDs.

Where did I leave off? Oh yes. Valentine's Day, which was spent working and generally taking the piss out of my managers as per usual ("There's an easier way to shift stock, you know, Nicole." "There's an easier way to shift YOUR FACE." "Yeah... well... YOUR MUM'S FACE!" "Oh! But... YOUR MUM'S FACE'S FACE'S- Oh, can I help you sir?"). I also met up with my cousins who are the very Faces Of Awesome, but due to 'unforeseen circumstances' such as my auntie being a magician's assistant and being cut in half (that's what she says whenever she show us all her battle scars) and the fact that Oslo is probably closer than they are in merry ol' Norfolk (near London), I haven't seen them in maybe four years. (I've just looked it up. Norfolk is closer than Oslo - WHEN DID NORWAY GET SO FAR AWAY?)

Gawwwwd I love them.

The funeral was on Monday, and Christicles, it was funny. I'm sorry, it was. I was, no fear, choking up for the beginning bit when the coffin showed up and then when my brother and co. carried it into the crematorium (why, WHY did there have to be smoke rising from the fecking chimney when we arrived?), but after a while it was such a God-awful affair that it was ust hilarious. The night before, we'd all met up at my aunt's house to get a stoopid bluddy hymn nailed out because we didn't know which version we had. After waaaaay too much faffing we thought we had it and then at the funeral we gave everyone these song sheets only to discover that the version we'd given the Co-op people was too short and so we missed 4 verses and that was the end of that.

Someone nicked off with the ministers clothes, and so he apologised if his ankles offended anyone because he had to borrow a gown that was too small for him.

"What's New Pussycat?" started playing at the end and I couldn't stop laughing. The minister gave me a death-grip handshake afterwards.

My mum had bought all the granddaughters/great-granddaughters little silver crosses except for me, and I put about that it was because the shop didn't have enough crosses. At the after party (that's all I can describe it as... a funeral after party) my sister put about the slightly more accurate though rather extremist idea that "Really? Mum said it was because you hate God." Thanks Cleo. You've really cleared me with the distant relatives.

The after party... Ohhh... It was at my aunt's house, and I spent most of the night drinking amazing concoctions that my recently-18 cousin made. "Torangina" was the favourite all round - gin, tonic and orangina. 'Twas most nomful.

Nearly died instantly whilst 'holding' a roll-up. Never laugh with a roll-up in your mouth. The conversation after I recovered went something like: "Well you're supposed to inhale!" "I KNOW THAT! BUT YOU'RE NOT MEANT TO INHALE THE WHOLE FUCKING CIGARETTE!" at which point my sister started her sniffing campaign because she's a Suspicious McSnifferson.

It was a random night. My camera is full of videos of making melty marshmallow biscuits, dancing to Michael Jackson's Thriller in sync, and trying to find the right proportions for "Jesusful Torangina". My auntie upheld one of my favourite memories of my grandma, a conversation a few weeks before she died about how she'd spent her better days scoring LSD with my auntie. I was running backwards and forwards fetching spliffs for said auntie by the end of the night.

I love my family. We do this funeral shit in style. I can proudly say my grandma would have loved it. It was a pretty intense send-off. It had every attendee in bed for all of the next day.

Yesterday the sun shone on a party,
And everybody shone at the sun.

Mostly Autumn - The Spirit Of Autumn Past (Part II)

Higher than hope.

I was kinda hoping that I'd get some time to write about what was happening before it actually happened.

This has been going on for maybe three weeks, but it all ended yesterday.

On Sunday night we all stopped over for food at my auntie's house, where my other auntie from Norfolk (The bit of Southern England that sticks out like a big round boob) was staying for a couple of days. My Norfolk auntie is mad. Totally manic. I love her insanely, she's got such infectious enthusiasm. My grandma told me a few weeks ago (when I was marvelling over the fact she'd drank a bottle of whisky in two hours and was totally normal) that her and my Norfolk auntie spent some awesome times with my uncle Ozzy (surname: Osbourne. I shit you not) scoring acid in the woods.

Anyway, on Sunday night my Norfolk auntie said at the end of a fabulous meal (my mum and both of my aunties have all been chefs at some point: win) "Let's just hope she goes without pain and that she isn't suffering anymore, because we all have to go sometime, sweethearts".

My grandma, my badass, awesome grandma, was put into a hospice temporarily a few weeks ago whilst they sorted her meds out (she'd forget to take them). About four days in they decided that she'd probably be in for a bit longer than they thought.

About a week ago my mum came home saying that Grandma had days left. I've tried to visit everyday since then. My first thought when I saw her was that she looked like she was melting (don't judge, my mind doesn't function on a courteous level). She's always had a fighting spirit, and when she wasn't strong enough to stay sat up in her wheelchair/bed she'd still ask to get out. When no one would let her out of bed (for her own sake) she threatened to shit in her bed unless they let her out (you can SO tell that we were related). She won that round.

This morning I left school after an hour feeling God-awful. I'm trying to be helpful, I look after my sister, nieces and nephew whilst my mum, aunts and brother run around after Grandma, I clean the house, cook food, go to work, do homework, sleep for Not Very Long and then go to school, and it's been the same for maybe three weeks. Totally worn out.

At about 3pm today my mum called and said she was going to drop by the hospice after work and then we'd go buy some food. I almost asked to go with her but I thought that'd be too fussy, so I stayed at home. 1 and a half hours later I got another call. Mum in tears saying grandma had died.




I had no idea what I was doing. I paced backwards and forwards trying to work out if I was going to cry or not, I thought about phoning BFF Main Gay.5, I thought about trying to call my dad. In the end I went to pick my sister up from school. I had to deliver the news.

And now I feel quiet. And sad, somewhere in the background. Anxious too, slightly, because I have to take time off school to sort stuff out. But I'm glad that she's not fighting anymore.

But now my mum owns grandma's house. Her and my sister are going to move in there, and me and my dad are going to stay where we live now. Dad'll be away for weeks at a time and I'll be more or less living on my own at age sixteen.

Scary potatoes.

Kathleen Rosemary Rogerson: 1st of Febuary, aged 70.

"Time, it took the most of me
And left me with no key
To unlock the chest of remedy."

Higher Than Hope - Nightwish

This is how it goes so far.

I keep thinking of ways to come back and say what's been happening since, Christicles, ages ago.

Lots of stuff has happened, lots of stuff hasn't happened and my sister, as ever, is being a cock.

Which makes me laugh really. It's nice that some things are consistent.

Mostly when I sit down to type something it goes like this.

The ceiling at Fibbers looks like any other living room ceiling. I can see it clearly because I'm stood on a platform. I'm stood on a platform because I'm working on the lighting desk. I'm looking at the ceiling because I'm shitting-bricks-nervous. A torch flashes side stage and I plunge the bar into darkness as the music starts. I'm muttering OkayokayokayokayI'mokayokayokay... under my breath and I'm hyperventilating. Stage fright from behind the crowd.

This is one of the more exciting things that has happened. I lit a show, lighting-engineer-style, one night last week and I didn't cock up. I even got a 'nice light show!' afterwards. I was nervous because I'm used to the lighting board at a bar called The Duchess and I learnt to use the board at Fibbers roughly three and a half minutes before the band started playing.

It went okay. It went well, even.

School's... iffy. I feel ill and tired most days, I'm actually off school today. I went in for one lesson and bleurgh.

I was horrified to discover that the new and improved Maryland cookies taste of ash, even though the improvement is that they've been made with golden syrup. I love golden syrup!

What a gyp.

What else, apart from The Big Thing?

My sister keeps sticking googly eyes to the vegetables in the fridge. I made mushroom stroganoff and it was looking up at me from the plate. I papped myself.

That's all I can be bothered to recap with right now.

Peas on earth and goodwill to all hen.

Conversation in the car yesterday:

Me: Doesn't it look like the rest of York is on fire and we're kinda flying toward it?

Mum: Yes. No. What?

Me: Scary potatoes.

Mum: Potatoes aren't scary.

Me: THEY COULD BE IF THEY WANTED TO BE!

Mum: I doubt that.

Me: NO! Potatoes have every right to be scary if they want to be. Who knows, they're probably the scariest fucking thing you will ever see on Halloween. Just because they're not scary in YOUR DIVINE PRESENCE does NOT mean that they're just harmless little potatoes.

Mum: You can stop now.

Me: OBJECTION! They probably just want you to think that. Potatoes face a lot of pressure in their community because they have fucking TRACTORS that uproot them from their homes, just so you can have your precious chips! STUPID FAT HOBBIT.

Mum: Shut up.

Me: Never! Potatoes do everything they can just to please you and you spit it back in their faces. You witch. They suffer for you, and this is how you repay them?

Mum: I'M SUFFERING NOW.

Me: Your suffering palls in comparison. Don't even get me started on the poor little peas!

Mum: Don't start then.

Me: You know well and good that I am a devout member of the Peas On Earth movement. I made badges and everything!

Mum: That's sooo biased.

Me: SOMEONE NEEDS TO PROTECT THEM FROM THEMSELVES!

Mum: You're out of my will.

Me: And the carrots! It's a known fact that carrots are sexual predators.

Mum: ...

Me: But it's okay. Because the potatoes have some defense. They have eyes everywhere. Haha! Geddit? Eyes... everywhere...? PUT THE DE-ICER DOWN.

Missing in action.

My sister has just totalled my laptop so I won't be around as much.

I'll finish NaBloPoMo and then I might now be back until around the 7th when I can get my laptop fixed.



My laptop has a monthly allowance on it so I don't have to pay insane amounts to use the internet but my lovely, delightful, charming sister used it all up talking to our neighbour on webcam whilst watching videos of shrieking cats (the sadist, I hate those videos) whilst I work myself into the ground, so now I have no free internet. I need to save what I've got left (not much) because I have to do research for the exams coming up on the 13th/15th of January and if I don't do that, I'll get less than a D in the exams.

If I get less than a C, Our Lord Archer will personally see to it that I get kicked out of sixth form.

I'd have to repeat the year anyway.

My sister is a dick.

So yarse... After Friday I'll be back around the 7th, because of that.

Just a head's up.